#and they are interesting reads when you understand it

[synvil]

Recording.. // Pornstar! Rafe Cameron x Pornstar! Fem! Reader

a/n: welp, this will be interesting. there’s so many ways this can go but let’s see which one i came up with.

synopsis : getting to work with the famous, most current top rated star in the porn industry was a dream. Let’s see how it turns out for you. pornstar! au!

warnings : explicit content! penetration, choking, cunnilingus, afab!, multiple orgasms, roughness, squirt, etc.

“[Name], thank you for coming. Did you get the email regarding today’s content?”

Shaking hands with the producer, you share a smile and nod, pulling away. “Yes, I read through it. I’m alright with it all.”

“Great, and I take it you’ve already showered and cleaned up before coming? Any questions?”

You nod again to the first part before thinking for a moment and parting your lips to speak. “Actually, I just wasn’t sure who I would be working with today. That wasn’t clear in the email.”

The producer exhales in understanding and hears the door opening, “Actually, we needed confirmation that he was willing to come in today,” and a tall, muscular and toned male steps out, a towel around his neck and in nothing but boxers and some gym shorts. “And there he is. Cameron!”

“Cameron..?”

The male who steps out looks up as he ruffles one end of the towel against his head of hair. “Yeah?” Almost immediately, he locks eyes with you.

Holy shit.

THE Rafe Cameron. The highest rated star in the industry, where every man and woman alike would kill to meet the handsome stud, much more, to work with him.

Must be a fever dream.

When you first auditioned to be part of this industry, Rafe was only beginning to take off.

And now that you were one of the top stars alongside him, Rafe was the highest rated one, and every woman who ever had the chance to work with him, could never be the same.

Thing is, you had no idea what he was like. Was he rude? The pompous kind of asshole? Or was he charismatic and sweet? But if he was, was it just for show?

Many thoughts begin to flood your head until you realize the producer and Rafe have been talking, and now he’s coming over to you, hand extended out.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Y-Yeah, same.” You mentally curse yourself out for your anxiety and shake his hand but even more for the fact that you have yet to make eye contact, still glazing over his dripping wet bare body.

Rafe follows your gaze and gives a small chuckle, a charming smirk following it as he pulls away. “Sorry, thought I’d get a quick shower in before we start our filming.” He explains but you just manage a small nod. “R-right.”

The producer comes over and pats both of your shoulders. “Alright, now that we’ve done introductions, we’ll go over the scene once more with both of you and we’ll get started. Rafe, why don’t you go get dressed and I’ll get [Name] prepped?”

Rafe nods and gives you one more glance, his smirk still shining at you. With a wink, he turns away and takes his leave.

That smirk.. it sends a certain thrilling feel of desire in your stomach and you swallow thickly before attempting to focus your gaze on the producer, who begins to instruct the scenes.

Here you are..

“I can’t believe you!”

You shout as you slam the front door behind you, just for it to open a second later and Rafe coming in. “God, you’re insufferable!”

The current scene was you and Rafe coming home from the bar, celebrating a night of a special occasion, you had gotten a promotion at work.

And now you were rushing inside, having caught your on and off boyfriend of two years, openly flirting with another woman right next to you, once again.

At least that what it looked like to you, but your boyfriend has cheated before, and you weren’t going through it again.

“Would you just listen to me for one second?!”

Rafe’s voice follows after you while you take off your heels and throw it his way. “Don’t fucking talk to me!”

He narrowly dodges the heels thrown at his face before the expensive bag in your hand is also aimed for his head.

“What are you doing?” He asks, catching the bag with a scoff as you retreat to the kitchen.

“Take it back. I don’t want it anymore, we’re done.”

“Done? So you’re just giving all the things i bought you, back?” Rafe looks at you in disbelief as you begin to take off the jewelry on your person and drop it on the counter with a clink.

“I’m done with second chances, you asshole. You can’t just do one nice thing for me, one night.” I curse, slamming my hands down on the countertop as I turn to face him.

Rafe calmly sets the bag down as he stands opposite of you of the counter and sighs softly. “Baby, you’re not thinking straight, just let me explain before you-“

“Before I what? Break up with you for the final time?” You pull off the bracelets until you’re finally free of any jewelry and slide it towards him. “Take it all back.”

This time, Rafe can’t help but curl his lips into an amused smile, as he watches you return everything on you that he had bought for you.

“All of it?”

You tsk and point to the doorway. “The heels are back there.” You remind him though he was obviously aware.

“Alright, everything.. then the dress is included, right?”

. . .

“W-What?-“ Clearly taken back, Rafe’s lips forms a smirk at your clear surprise.

“Last I checked, I bought that stunning black gown you’re wearing tonight.. to celebrate.. remember?”

His words cause you to purse your lips and you’re aware of his slow advances towards you as he rounds the island counter in the kitchen. Rafe doesn’t break eye contact, keeping his eyes trained on you as he does this.

Tensions are high and you know he’s right, but you also know what will happen if you take off the dress.

However, behind the facade, behind the cameras rolling, your inner self is ready to burst. Your cheeks are beginning to flush and you can feel the intensity of his gaze on your body, trailing up and down your figure. Whether or not he was in character was unclear but it still made you wet with arousal at the sight.

Reluctantly, you bring your hands up to the straps, pulling it to the side of your shoulders and down slowly.

Rafe’s eyes hungrily takes in your fully naked form, you weren’t even wearing panties.

Your lack of undergarments weren't part of the script, which you can tell catches Rafe by real surprise momentarily, but it quickly dissipates into a smirk instead.

“No underwear?.. How naughty of you..” he murmurs as he finally makes it to your side and you fight the blush that’s threatening to spread and darken further.

“Shut up-“

Rafe just chuckles at your reaction as his hands sneaks around your bare waist. He looks down from his height with a certain glint in his eyes. “Hey, i’m not complaining..” He says as his head moves to your neck, kissing your collarbone softly. “it's kinda sexy..”

What the hell, I can’t respond.

He’s so hot.. i need to talk.. but im speechless..

My heart is pounding so hard— Relax, [Name], this is all just acting- Rafe Cameron is just acting.

You’re overthinking, stay professional!

But the next thing you knew, Rafe Cameron’s lips were smashing against yours in an intense, heated kiss.

And the faint whimper that escaped your lips wasn’t fake.

Needy hands roam your body everywhere, his lips planted on your neck and kissing every inch of your skin. He raises his head up to your ear and whispers, his breath hot. “You good?” It was quiet and subtle, not loud enough to pick up on the microphone hanging near us.

You nod faintly, and he grins, not waste another second ravishing you.

All the prior anxiety and worries you had faded and you found yourself melting into the kiss, Rafe’s muscular arms lifting you up by the waist and placing you on the counter, the cold touch making you gasp.

That gasp was enough time for him to allow his tongue to slip in, the muscle exploring inside your mouth, making you moan lightly.

Every movement was full of passion, Rafe fondling your breasts, giving each mound a full squeeze. His fingertips pinch your buds, a gentle twist causing you to send a breathy sigh. Your hands find their way to his hair and tangle your fingers in the locks of his dirty blonde locks.

Rafe's low chuckles reaches your ears again as he travels up to nip at your earlobes. His right hand goes down to dip between your thighs, his index finger planting itself right at your clit. He rubs it a few times before whispering, "So wet.. I can't wait to taste your pretty pussy.."

It's almost a growl when he says it, sending rushes of adrenaline through your body and the boost of arousal grows further in you.

The Rafe Cameron gives you one last kiss on the lips before he slowly slides down to his knees, muscular hands grabbing a hold of your thighs tight and firm, and being face to face with your already glistening pussy.

He licks his lips and doesn't hesitate to dive face first, tongue taking a long lick to your folds before going down on you. "O-oh, fuck-" Your eyes flutter shut at the wet sensation, a sharp inhale slipping out.

Holy shit, it felt incredible.

Rafe's tongue moves in circles around your clit a few times before continuously slurping up your juices that leaked from your folds, devouring your pussy like he was starved.

Your hands prop up your body by placing it firmly on the surface under you, but you can't help the hand that goes to tug on his hair and push his face deeper in, which causes him to chuckle deeply, the action creating vibrations through you.

"Oh god, Rafe." You breathily pant, his grip forcing your thighs to remain spread while his tongue prods at your entrance, pushing in and out. "Shit.. you taste incredible.." He mutters as his nose buries itself against your clit. The feeling is enough to send you into overdrive, your head tossing back and a tightening in your stomach makes you cry out.

"R-Rafe, I'm so close-"

Grinding your hips against his face, you illicit a loud mewl of pleasure, your body sending shocks throughout as you tremble from a hard orgasm.

Despite your fluids gushing down his chin, he continues to delve deeper in, overstimulating you, causing your thighs to shake as you cry out again, making him laugh.

“Aw, was it too much for you, sweetheart?” He grins mischievously and you flush, ignoring the way your heart flutters at the nickname as you attempt to catch your breath, watching as he licks his lips and stands up straight, ripping off his button up.

You can feel your mouth going dry at the sight of his toned, chiseled abs, the sweat glistening on his skin but what widened your eyes was the sight of his hardened bulge through his trousers, and you reach for the hem of his pants and pull him close, wrapping your legs around his torso.

Remembering you’re still on camera, you speak, “This doesn’t mean I forgive you.” You mutter, staring into his eyes while your hands palm him softly, working to unzip his zipper. But your words only cause him to flash a smirk as he helps you undo his trousers. “Oh don’t worry, sweetheart, by the time i’m done with you, you’ll forget about tonight.”

Crashing his lips with yours, you grunt but let him pull you even more towards the edge before pulling you down to the ground, his hands pulling the waistband of his pants and boxers down.

He strokes himself a few times, your eyes unable to help itself to the sight and you swallow thickly.

“Something wrong, baby?” He hums in amusement and you turn away a bit bashfully. “Not at all.”

Turning you around so you faced away from him, he breaks into a smirk as he wraps his arm around to give you a hand necklace, your throat firm in his grasp. Lining himself up at your entrance, he leans in close and speaks lowly. “Good, because I don’t intend to stop.”

Without warning, he inserts his length inside and you cry out a noise of pleasure. Your back at arches and he tightens his grip on your throat, but not enough to hurt you. “Heh, shit, you’re so fucking tight..” It almost seemed like it was actually Rafe saying this to you, instead of his character, but you didn’t have much time to think about it after as he begins to thrust into you from behind.

“F-Fuck-!”

One hand goes up to grab ahold of his arm that was holding your neck, and the other holds onto the counter for support. Every hard thrust causes your breasts to bounce as you two move in sync, Rafe doing deep but slow thrusts. His other hand is firming holding your waist but it travels up to grope your right breast, squeezing it hard.

Strings of moans are filling the room, and you momentarily forget the audience and cameras on you as all you can focus on is Rafe’s cock penetrating you hard.

He’s so deep.. i-i can’t think straight- it’s too much..

i’m so close- no wonder he’s so popular..

Rafe pulls away from your neck to use both hands to hold your hips firmly, his own picking up the pace as he begins to fuck you fast, the wet juices squelching each time your skin makes contact.

His hand goes down and his finger flicks your clit and it’s starting to send you over the edge. “Rafe..” Whimpers escape you as you dip your head down, clenching your fists on the countertop tightly.

“R-Rafe, fuck, you’re so deep.. i-i’m gonna cum-“

Rafe just smirks as he rubs your clit further, continuously thrusting you harder and faster until he feels a gush over your release and he pulls out, watching as your pretty glistening pussy squirts all over the floor.

“Fuck.” He bites his lip at the sight as he feels his own building up, and he spins you around while you’re panting. “Get on your knees,”

You fall to your knees to his command, and watch as he strokes himself fast and seconds later, his cum spurts its white salty liquid over your face, painting it like a canvas.

He pants heavily, catching his breath while you do the same, eyes fluttered shut at the warm liquid drips down.

“And cut! That was great, now get cleaned up you two!”

“You alright, [Name]?”

Still on the ground, you barely register a voice is talking to you while you appear dazed and confused.

Rafe has some skin-sensitive wipes in his hands, gently rubbing your face to wipe off any of his fluids before carefully helping you to your feet. “Did I go too rough on you?”

“I’m alright, thanks..” You whisper, feeling the exhaustion take over you. You lean onto Rafe, who holds you securely against his chest. “If it’s any consolation, today was fuckin’ amazing..” He chuckles lightly as he presses a tender kiss to your temple before guiding you to the couch where you can rest for a bit.

“Yeah?.. I think i understand why so many women gush over you after working with you.” You giggle weakly, sending an appreciative look when he sets you down gently, placing a blanket over you. He also chuckles lightly. “Yeah, but I think i’d like to work with you again, sometime soon. Maybe we can talk about our next filming together over dinner?”

Your stomach feels as though butterflies are doing flips inside you at the assumption of his words. “Are you asking me out, Rafe Cameron?”

Rafe merely shares a wink before pecking your forehead and getting up. “I’ll let you figure that out. Meanwhile, I’ll head to your room and draw you a bath to clean up.”

He takes your hand to press a soft kiss to the back of it before smiling your way and then turning to leave. Maybe he wasn’t acting the whole time.

“.. Rafe Cameron just asked me out..”

Best filming job ever.

a/n: hello all, hope you enjoyed! :) merry christmas. i shall have the first post of my camgirl series out soon!! <3

i’m sorry if this seems like such a rushed abrupt ending but i wanted to finish this in time for christmas :)

[sbcdh]

“Oh gosh the fire. Yes it was truly a tragedy. You know, HECA79 was the prototype for the new regulation model. Well, haha, new for the time. It was the seventies after all. It really is fascinating. She was the first one we put in the class N tanks. Fascinating technology for the time, clever as the dickens. You see, the insides of the tank were to be lined with a thin layer of magnetically laminated gold calcite particles that formed a reflective lattice under electrical stimulation. A gold plated one-way mirror for brainwaves! I’m sure you understand, it was the best we could do for 1983-”

“So you subscribe to the, uh, equipment malfunction theory?”

“Huh? Oh! Oh. Terribly sorry. Equipment malfunction? As I recall, it functioned quite well.”

“So you believe the fire was caused by something else?”

“The fire? Oh. Well, I’m not quite sure. I don’t know the exact specifications, but if I recall correctly, there were all sorts of firebreaks and engineers and junior-engineers stationed all around –all helmeted, mind you– to make sure that sort of thing never happened.”

“And yet.”

“And yet. Indeed…Well, between you and me, I think It was one of the junior engineers.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh yes. We were a bit of a maverick bunch back then. Reagan gave us all that research money, but, well, its always a bit different when the wheels hit the pavement haha. Oh. Oh. I hope I haven’t gotten anyone in trouble. They were nice lads all. Well, some of them were Germans, but nice lads.”

“We are more interested in your observations of HECA79. I was told you were able to directly observe her during the incident. If there is anything you can tell us, please, speak loudly enough for the tape to hear.”

“Oh! Oh gosh. You know, I completely forgot we were being taped haha! And you caught all of my rambling! Well, I think I can help you out. Oh yes. Now. You must understand. A good half of this is going to be embellished. You know how memories go, you always get more heroic looking back as time goes on haha. But yes, I think I can help you out. Ah, where should I start?”

“What was the first thing out of the ordinary that you noticed?”

“Her lips were moving.”

“Is that out of the ordinary?”

“By gosh for a plutophant yes! At full emmanation, there is no part of them that is not the market! Every neuron soaked in hypno-amphetamine rocket fuel! Most of them –if you’ll pardon my language sir– shit their tanks the moment their Id touches the sub-finantial background grid! What do you think half those tubes are for! A plutophant in full emmanation doesn’t have a braincell to spare to keep their sphincters closed, much less perform something as complex as speech!”

“I see. Could you make out what the asset was saying?”

“Oh no. No, I’m afraid not. I can’t read lips. Back in those days, they were hooked up to a helmet, and then the helmet read the delta-wave patterns, and then printed that on magnetic tape. That way, we could feed the tape to some lob-, ah translators, and have them interpret the feed.”

“When did her lips start to move? What time of day?”

“Funny thing, almost exactly at 12:03. I should have been off at lunch, but I was procrastinating. I had a crossword I was right on the edge of solving. It was one of those big words that goes all the way across the page. TIMEPIECE. I remember that clear as day.”

“Interesting. I have here that equipment registered the fire almost exactly seven minutes later.”

“Oh dear. Do you understand what that means sir?”

“No, please, enlighten me.”

“Is that a schematic of the N class tank you have there? Hand it over. Thank you sir. So. Back in 1983, we didn’t have any of the fancy digital equipment we have now. Well, we did, but not to the same degree. Most of our equipment was good old analogue. You see this module here? These weren’t part of our system. No, we were waiting on the replacements to show up.”

“And, what is that part?” 

“Think of it like the uh, ah yes, the carburetor in a car. It keeps everything balanced. Keeps the subjects metabolism steady so they don’t chew through the drugs too fast, keeps the tank at the ideal temperature for chemical reactions, without boiling the subject like a lobster haha. But the key is, it was completely mechanical. But at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of tubes full of fluid that move based on pressure differentials.”

“Which means?”

“Well, heat would throw it off.”

“Here, I think we have a schematic. Now, doctor, this is very important. I need you to explain to me exactly how the machine malfunctioned, and how it would affect HECA79.”

“Well technically, it wasn’t malfunctioning at all. It was functioning correctly, just under less-than-ideal circumstances. Oh, haha. Yes, haha, but thats not what you’re looking for haha. Yes. Well. What side did the fire hit it from? Do you know?”

“This one here.”

“Fascinating. Well. Then, the apparatus would have uh, hm. Oh dear.”

“Doctor.”

“It would have spiked the hypnostimulant feed, while introducing impurities.”

“Which means?”

“I- I haven’t the slightest idea. It would've been deadly, I can assure you that. But its as if…Its as if you had a car, coasting in neutral, downhill at terminal velocity, and then you switched gears to high gear, and then slammed the gas while spraying rocket fuel into the intake.”

“Could we ask you to write a full report on your speculation?”

“Frankly sir, I am as intrigued as you are. You would have to hold my wrists to keep me from writing on this. Fascinating.”

ENCLOSED: FINAL READOUT OF HECA79

"BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD BUY GOLD"[Phrase repeats over twenty thousand times.]

[black-crested-jaybird]

I am an American Christian from a non-evangelical, "mainline" tradition. When I was young, my best friend was an evangelical Baptist, and for several years I really tried to fit into that culture - listening to Christian radio, attempting to read the bible and pray daily, and feeling pressure to convert others to Christianity. Fortunately for my conscience nowadays, I was terrible at it - my attempts at proselytizing pretty much consisted of wearing a "Jesus is awesome!" T-shirt to school once a month and feeling hideously self-conscious about it the entire time.

When I was in high school, a girl I was getting to know told me she had two moms. I distinctly remember consciously, if rapidly, weighing the Christianity I already felt uncomfortable with against my growing friendship with her, and choosing her. We soon became fast friends. Within about a year, I left Christianity entirely and joined another religion, one that doesn't proselytize.

But @jessicalprice is right - religion is culture. When my high school friend was killed by a drunk driver six years later, my grief led me to a church I had visited as a child. Just walking in and sitting down in the empty sanctuary filled me with such a strong feeling of familiarity that I burst into tears. Over the next few months, I started attending church again, even as I struggled to reconcile the feeling of rightness and belonging I felt there with the bigotry and oppression that pervades so much of American Protestantism.

Decades later, I am still grappling with the question of what ethical Christianity looks like, for me as an individual and in the context of a religious institution; just as I am working on recognizing and deconstructing racism, white supremacy, and colonialism in myself and in my society. I've learned about cultural Christianity and see it more and more clearly, just as I continue to learn what American culture is (once I got past the first lesson, which is that America has a culture at all, and isn't just the default setting for humans).

I often say that I have a similar relationship with my identity as a U.S. citizen as I do with my identity as a Christian: despite their many problems and the grave harm they have done and too often continue to do, they are my home. @jessicalprice has helped me to realize that this is not a similarity at all. Despite knowing about cultural Christianity, despite seeing it more and more clearly around me and in myself, I didn't realize until now that those "two" identities are really the same identity.

I don't have any earthshaking conclusions to draw from this. No grand unifying theory of culture. I only want to say thank you to @jessicalprice for helping me understand myself, and my Christian culture, a little better today.

ETA: I just read through ALL the notes. They were very interesting, and I just reblogged one particularly interesting set of additions. To avoid doing that AGAIN with this very long post, I'm adding in OP's book recommendation, which I'm hoping will help me and my church community in our work on becoming a better kind of Christianity: J. Cameron Carter's Race: A Theological Perspective.

culture isn’t modular

I did a thread (actually several) on Twitter a few years ago about Christianity’s attempts to paint itself as modular, and I’ve been seeing them referenced here in the cultural christianity Discourse, and a few people have DMed me asking me to post it here, so here’s a rehash of several of those threads:

A big part of why Christian atheists have trouble seeing how culturally Christian they still are is that Christianity advertises itself as being modular, which is not how belief systems have worked for most of human history. 

A selling point of Christianity has always been the idea that it’s plug-and-play: you don’t have to stop being Irish or Korean or Nigerian to be Christian, you don’t have to learn a new language, you keep your culture. 

And you’re just also Christian.

(You can see, then, why so many Christian atheists struggle with the idea that they’re still Christian–to them, Christianity is this modular belief in God and Jesus and a few other tenets, and everything else is… everything else. Which is, not to get ahead of myself, very compatible with some tacit white supremacy: the “everything else” is goes unexamined for its cultural specificity. It’s just Normal. Default. Neutral.)

Evangelicals in particular love to contrast this to Islam, to the idea that you have to learn Arabic and adopt elements of Arab culture to be Muslim, which helps fuel the image of Islam as a Foreign Ideology that’s taking over the West.

The rest of us don’t have that particular jack

Meanwhile, Christians position Christianity as a modular component of your life. Keep your culture, your traditions, your language and just swap out your Other Religion Module for a Christianity Module.

The end game is, in theory, a rainbow of diverse people and cultures that are all one big happy family in Christ. We’re going to come back to how Christianity isn’t actually modular, but for the moment, let’s talk about it as if it had succeeded in that design goal. 

Even if Christianity were successfully modular, if it were something that you could just plug in to the Belief System Receptor in a culture and leave the rest of it undisturbed, the problem is most cultures don’t have a modular Belief System Receptor. Spirituality has, for the entirety of human history, not been something that’s modular. It’s deeply interwoven with the rest of culture and society. You can’t just pull it out and plug something else in and have the culture remain stable.

(And to be clear, even using the term “spirituality” here is a sop to Christianity. What cultures have are worldviews that deal with humanity’s place in the universe/reality; people’s relationships to other people; the idea of individual, societal, or human purpose; how the culture defines membership; etc. These may or may not deal with the supernatural or “spiritual.”)

And so OF COURSE attempting to pull out a culture’s indigenous belief system and replace it with Christianity has almost always had destructive effects on that culture.

Not only is Christianity not representative of “religion” full stop, it’s actually arguably *anomalous* in its attempt to be modular (and thus universal to all cultures) rather than inextricable from culture.

Now, of course, it hasn’t actually succeeded in that–the US is a thoroughly Christian culture–but it does lead to the idea that one can somehow parse out which pieces of culture are “religious” versus which are “secular”. That framing is antithetical to most cultures. E.g. you can’t separate the development of a lot of cultural practices around what people eat and how they get it from elements of their worldview that Christians would probably label “religious.” But that entire *framing* of religious vs. secular is a Christian one.

Is Passover a religious holiday or a secular one? The answer isn’t one or the other, or neither, or both. It’s that the framing of this question is wrong.

And Christianity isn’t a plugin, however much it wants to be

Moreover, Christianity isn’t actually culture-neutral or modular. 

It’s easy for this to get obscured by seeing Christianity as a tool of particular cultures’ colonialism (e.g. the British using Christianity to spread British culture) or of whiteness in general, and not seeing how Christianity itself is colonial. This helps protect the idea that “true” Christianity is good and innocent, and if priests or missionaries are converting people at swordpoint or claiming land for European powers or destroying indigenous cultures, that must be a misuse of Christianity, a “fake” or “corrupted” Christianity.

Never mind that for every other culture, that culture is what its members do. Christianity, uniquely, must be judged on what it says its ideals are, not what it actually is. 

Mistaking the engine for the exhaust

But it’s not just an otherwise innocent tool of colonialism: it’s a driver of it. 

At the end of the day, it’s really hard to construct a version of the Great Commission that isn’t inherently colonial. The end-goal of a world in which everyone is Christian is a world without non-Christian cultures. (As is the end goal of a world in which everyone is atheist by Christian definitions.)

Yet we focus on the way Christianity came with British or Spanish culture when they colonized a place–the churches are here because the Spaniards who conquered this area were Catholic–and miss how Christianity actually has its own cultural tropes that it brings with it. It’s more subtle, of course, when Christianity didn’t come in explicitly as the result of military conquest.

Or put another way, those cultures didn’t just shape the Christianity they brought to places they colonized–they were shaped by it. How much of the commonality between European cultures is because of Christianity?

It’s not all a competition

A lot of Christians (cultural and practicing), if you push them, will eventually paint you a picture of a very Hobbesian world in which all religions, red in tooth and claw, are trying to take over the world. It’s the “natural order” to attempt to eliminate all cultures but your own. 

If you point out to them that belief and worldview are deeply personal, and proselytizing is objectifying, because you’re basically telling the person you’re proselytizing to that who they are is wrong, you often get some version of “that’s how everyone is, though.”

Like we all go through life seeing other humans as incomplete and fundamentally flawed and the only way to “fix” them is to get them to believe what we believe. And, like, that is not how everyone relates to others?

But it’s definitely how both practicing Christians and Christian antitheists relate to others. If, for Christians, your lack of Jesus is a fundamental flaw in you that needs to be fixed, for New Atheists, your “religion” (that is, your non-Christian culture) is a fundamental flaw in you that needs to be fixed. Neither Christians nor New Atheists are able to relate to anyone else as fine as they are. It’s all a Hobbesian zero-sum game. It’s all a game of conversion with only win and loss conditions. You are, essentially, only an NPC worth points.

The idea of being any other way is not only wrong, but impossible to them. If you claim to exist in any other way, you are either deluded or lying.

So, we get Christian atheists claiming that if you identify as Jewish, you can’t really be an atheist. Or sometimes they’ll make an exception for someone who’s “only ethnically Jewish.” If the only way you relate to your Jewishness is as ancestry, then you can be an atheist. Otherwise, you’re lying. 

Or, if you’re not lying, you’re deluded. You just don’t understand that there’s no need for you to keep any dietary practices or continue to engage in any form of ritual or celebrate any of those “religious” Jewish holidays, and by golly, this here “ex”-Christian atheist is here to separate out for you which parts of your culture are “religious” and which ones are “secular.”

Religious/secular is a Christian distinction

A lot of atheists from Christian backgrounds (whether or not they were raised explicitly Christian) have trouble seeing how Christian they are because they’ve accepted the Christian idea that “religion” is modular. (If we define “religion” the way Christians (whether practicing or cultural) define it, Christianity might be the only religion that actually exists. Maybe Islam?)

When people from non-Christian cultures talk about the hegemonically Christian and white supremacist nature of a lot of atheism, it reflects how outside of Christianity, spirituality/worldview isn’t something you can just pull out of a culture.

Christian atheists tend to see the cultural practices of non-Christians as “religious” and think that they should give them up (talk to Jewish atheists who keep kosher about Christian atheist reactions to that). But because Christianity positions itself as modular, people from Christian backgrounds tend not to see how Christian the culture they imagine as “neutral” or “normal” actually is. In their minds, you just pull out the Christianity module and are left with a neutral, secular society.

So, if people from non-Christian backgrounds would just give up their superstitions, they’d look the same as Christian atheists. 

Your secularism is specifically post-Christian

Of course, that culture with the Christianity module pulled out ISN’T neutral. So the idea that that’s what “secular society” should look like ends up following the same pattern as Christian colonialism throughout history: the promise that you can keep your culture and just plug in a different belief system (or, purportedly, a lack of a belief system), which has always, always been a lie. The secular, “enlightened” life that most Christian atheists envision is one that’s still built on white, western Christianity, and the idea that people should conform to it is still attempting to homogenize society to a white Christian ideal. 

For people from cultures that don’t see spirituality as modular, this is pretty obvious. It’s obvious to a lot of people from non-white Christian cultures that have syncretized Christianity in a way that doesn’t truck with the modularity illusion. 

I also think, even though they’re not conceptualizing it in these terms, that it’s actually obvious to a lot of evangelicals. (The difference being that white evangelical Christianity enthusiastically embraces white supremacy, so they see the destruction of non-Christian culture as good.) But I think it’s invisible to a lot of mainline non-evangelical Christians, and it’s definitely invisible to a lot of people who leave Christianity.

And that inability to see culture outside a Christian framing means that American secularism is still shaped like Christianity. It’s basically the same text with a few sentences deleted and some terms replaced.

Which, again, is by design. The idea that you can deconvert to (Christian) atheism and not have to change much besides your opinions about God is the mirror of how easy it’s supposed to be to convert to Christianity.

Human societies don’t follow evolutionary biology

The Victorian Christian framing underlying current Western ideas of enlightened secularism, that religious practice (and human culture in general) is subject to the same sort of unilateral, simple evolution toward a superior state to which they, at the time, largely reduced biological evolution, is deeply white supremacist.

It posits religious evolution as a constantly self-refining process from “primitive” animism and polytheism to monotheism to white European/American Christianity. For Christians, that’s the height of human culture. For ex-Christians, the next step is Christian-derived secularism.

Maybe you’ve seen this comic?

The thing is, animism isn’t more “primitive” than polytheism, and polytheism isn’t more “primitive” than monotheism. Older doesn’t mean less advanced/sophisticated/complex. Hinduism isn’t more “primitive” than Judaism just because it’s polytheistic and Judaism is monotheistic. 

Human cultures continue to change and adapt. (Arguably, older religions are more sophisticated than newer ones because they’ve had a lot more time to refine their practices and ideologies instead of having to define them.) Also, not all cultures are part of the same family tree. Christianity and Islam may be derived from Judaism, but Judaism and Hinduism have no real relationship to one another. 

But in this worldview, Christianity is “normal” religion, which is still more primitive than enlightened secularism, but more advanced than all those other primitive, superstitious, irrational beliefs.

Just like Christians, when Christian atheists do try to make room for cultures that aren’t white and European-derived, the tacit demand is “okay, but you have to separate out the parts of your culture that the Christian sacred-secular divide would deem ‘religious.’”

Either way, people from non-Christian cultures, if they’re to be equals, are supposed to get with the program and assimilate.

You’re not qualified to be a universal arbiter of what culture is good

Christian atheists usually want everyone to unplug that Religion module!

So, for example, you have ex-Christian atheists who are down with pluralism trying to get ex-Christian atheists who aren’t to leave Jews alone by pointing out that you can be atheist and Jewish.

But some of us aren’t atheist. (I’m agnostic by Christian standards.) And the idea that Jews shouldn’t be targets for harassment because they can be atheists and therefore possibly have some common sense is still demanding that people from other cultures conform to one culture’s standard of what being “rational” is.  

Which, like, is kind of galling when y’all don’t even understand what “belief in G-d” means to Jews, and people from a culture that took until the 1800s to figure out that washing their hands was good are setting themselves up as the Universal Arbiters of Rationality.

(BTW, most of this also holds true for non-white Christianity, too. I guarantee you most white Christian atheists don’t have a good sense of what role church plays in the lives of Black communities, so maybe shut up about it.)

In any case, reducing Christianity–a massive, ambient phenomenon inextricable from Western culture–to the specific manifestation of Christian practice that you grew up with is, frankly, absurd. 

And you can’t be any help in deconstructing hegemony when you refuse to perceive it and understand that it isn’t something you can take off like a garment, and you probably won’t ever recognize and uproot all the ways in which it affects you, especially when you are continuing to live within it. 

What hegemony doesn’t want you to know

One of the ways hegemony sustains and perpetuates itself is by reinforcing the idea not so much that other ways of being and knowing are evil (although that’s usually a stage in an ideology becoming hegemonic), but that they’re impossible. That they don’t actually exist. 

See, again, the idea that anyone claiming to live differently is either lying or deluded.

There are few clearer examples of how pervasive Christian hegemony is than Christian atheists being certain every religion works like Christianity. Hegemonic Christianity wants you to think that all cultures work like Christianity because it wants their belief systems to be modular so you can just …swap them. And it wants to pretend that culture/worldview is a free market where it can just outcompete other cultures.

But that’s… not how anything works. 

And the truth of the matter is that white nationalist Christians shoot at synagogues and Sikh temples and mosques because those other ways of being can’t be allowed to exist. 

They don’t shoot at atheist conventions because there’s room in hegemonic Christianity for Christian atheists precisely because Christian atheists are still culturally Christian. Their atheism is Christian-shaped.

They may not like you. They’re definitely going to try to convert you. They may not want you to be able to hold public office or teach their kids.

But the only challenge you’re providing is that of The Existence of Disbelief. And that’s fine. That makes you a really safe Other to have around. You can See The Light and not have to change much.

What you’re not doing is providing an example of a whole other way of being and knowing that (often) predates Christianity and is completely separate from it and has managed to survive it and continue to live and thrive (there’s a reason Christians like to speak of Jews and Judaism in the past tense, and it’s similar to the reason white people like to speak of indigenous peoples of the Americas in the past tense). 

That’s not a criticism–it’s fine to just… be post-Christian. There’s not actually anything wrong with being culturally Christian. The problems come in when you start denying that it’s a thing, or insisting that you, unique among humankind, are above Having A Culture.

But it does mean that you don’t pose the same sort of threat to Christianity that other cultures do, and hence, less violence. 

[fishnapple]

What can bring true satisfaction to your heart?

Let's end this year by hearing what your heart yearns for. And also trying out my new AAB (Animal Advisory Board) set for divination ✨️

This is a general reading meant for multiple people. Take only what resonates and leave out the rest.

Your feedback is much appreciated. If you find the reading resonated with you, leave a comment, I’d love to know 🎐

About me | Masterpost Book a reading with me - KO-FI (→ personal reading)

ORANGE

On the surface level, what feels like satisfaction for you is recognition for your hard work. You feel a sense of lack when it comes to your material possessions, that that sense of lack can affect your sense of self greatly. You could feel that the more you have, the more confident and safe you are, you find safety in a familiar physical world. Working, earning money, and then being recognised for your effort can elevate your "worth" in this world, or so you believe. And being worthy is the solid proof of existence and meaning. But you will soon find that in chasing success and recognition, you risk burning out and losing your vitality, your jest for life. Being too focused on a goal, a task can narrow your perspective and make you feel like life is just a race, a competition. You want to show your best, to be known as the most hard working person, the one who contributes the most, the one who can take on any tasks without fear, the one who shines the brightest. Life seems like a stage where you have to perform constantly, even when you're alone, your actions are being observed by an invisible audience.

But your inner self disagrees with that approach, and it will demand a change from you. You can't keep running in "the race" forever because there's simply no race for you to run, just a life for you to be in and to live. A part of you is sleeping, latent inspirations are trapped inside without the means to be expressed. It's quite contradictory, on the outside, you look so busy and active, always doing something, but on the inside, the energy is stagnant and inactive. This feeling will continue to pile up until you can't take it anymore and want to burst out, to take off. The feeling of true freedom, of flying for the first time will open up a floodgate inside you, you will begin to nurture a different perspective, you will want to slow down your run and look around, suddenly you will find so many interesting things around you that you haven't noticed before.

By being free, you will also have a different view on relationships. Your heart yearns for freedom, freedom to be yourself, and freedom to love. You will want to bond deeply with people, to seek comfort in the emotional sense, not in the physical sense anymore. You seek true understanding, of yourself, of the other person and the world you live in. Deep connections can bring the most satisfaction, something that you might have been oblivious to up until now. You won't seek recognition from the general crowd anymore, you will seek the transparency of being seen completely by a loved one.

WHITE

For this group, I see a lot of images about predators attacking prey. This can mean that you are having contradictory thoughts and feelings inside yourself, like an inner critic, always watching and judging your every wish and action. This creates lots of unnecessary fears in you, you're held prisoner by your own mind. You desire many different things, or said in a different way, many different things can bring you satisfaction, but they can be at odds with each other. The solution for you is to go ahead and do them anyway, no matter how much your mind protest or try to "talk" you out of it, which sometimes can be in a really aggressive way. Your mind can create visions of people ridicule or criticise you for your decisions. What you need to do is triumph over those visions, shoo them away, and just do what you instinctively feel drawn to do and then see for yourself, with you own eyes, the actual outcome, only then will you have solid "proof" to chase away those intrusive thoughts in your mind. For you, getting over your myriad fears will be your biggest achievement and satisfaction. For every victory over your fear, no matter how small, you deserve to get a pat on your back. Be gentle with yourself, but firm enough to give yourself a chance to grow.

About your many desires, one is about receiving and giving love. You might just focus on romance and dating right now, without much serious thought about a long-term commitment and building a family with someone. But in the future, when you allow yourself to grow more and gain new perspectives, the thought of commitment will naturally arise in you. You won't just desire love and affection alone, you also desire a place to call home, a place where someone will be there to welcome you. You will want to nurture someone, and be nurtured back, work for the connection, and see your effort grow into a deep bond. You're working hard right now, but mostly to build your own foundation, later in life, you will want to work hard to build that foundation with another person. Your heart will flourish in the nurturing environment of a steady relationship.

For now, just focus your energy on getting to know yourself, every nook and cranny. Come to your rescue when your mind begins to nag, especially when you want to rest and contemplate hidden things behind the veil of mundane life. Use your resting time to let your mind explore foreign subjects, coax it gently when it tries to resist learning new things. The more you explore, the more your mind will soar, the more your heart will feel tranquil and happy.

PINK

Does the question of whether the person you're attracted to romantically can also be your friend ever cross your mind? Or the question of whether that person can truly connect with you on a mental level? I see the people who chose this group are ardent lovers. The kind that would focus their all on a connection, passionate and gripping. You might be the person who loves falling in love, the feeling of romance and relationships brings you great joy. But the pitfall here is that you tend to idealise the other person and the connection to the point of overlooking some glaring incompatibilities. On a surface level, a person might seem fun and physically ideal to be your partner, but let some time pass and look closer, you will find that you don't really connect on a more deeper level. A telling sign would be that conversations are lacklustre, there's an uncomfortable silence between you, the subjects of the conversation are superficial. In the long run, this can create dissatisfaction in the relationship.

What you might not realise is that a deep bond, especially forged over many conversations, is essential to your feeling of overall happiness about life. Friendship matters, even love should be built based upon friendship. Having many people who you can call friends is actually more satisfying than having many lovers, friends who come from many walks of life, from all around the world. Having a group of close friends who can go on adventures with you, who can nurture you, who can build you up, who can make your mind buzzing, who can be your family, that's what brings true satisfaction to your heart.

Can you see the stag nipping at a tree while the peacock is facing the opposite direction? I think right now, the way you express yourself can be like a form of reaction to the specific person whom you're interacting with, rather than just communicating who you are in general. In conversations, you might try to act more cool, showing the best of yourself in order to build a favourable image, which is what all of us do to some degrees, consciously or not. But this shape-shifting energy can be detrimental to really connect with the other person. Instead of letting the other person provide you with 'nutrition' for your mind and heart, you're busy impressing them. This can happen in all your interactions, whether with strangers, acquaintances, friends, family, lovers. You should take a more relaxed approach, allowing the words to seep into you leisurely, building friendship as if growing a tree, then you will have a flourished heart.

GREEN

The word 'Success' has a lot of meanings to you, and all meanings have weight that defines your life. For you, being successful doesn't have to be about earning lots of money of being famous, though that is a part of the 'Success' that you pursue, it's not all. You want to leave behind your legacies, the proof that you exist, the proof that you have lived hard and well, that your life has meaning.

Throughout your life, you will encounter various stumbling blocks that require you to reinvent yourself, like ascending a stairway, each step bring your higher, closer to your ideals. You're willing to change yourself, to bring about a complete overhaul, allow yourself to play various roles, don many masks, life is a big stage and you're a magician, a jester or a seller, who always has something to dazzle and sell to the audience. This 'performance' is not fake or disingenuous at all, it's what you're born to do, to achieve prestige and finally reach the top of the stairway.

You have a core that's very malleable and agile, constantly moving, though it can help you be flexible and move through situations with ease, it can create an inner confusion. You feel like you have to be at all places, here and there, never settle down, forever swimming, nothing can hold you down and keep you in one place for long. This fuels your desire to find an anchor in the physical world. To know what you've done, what you've achieved, where you need to go. You need external structure and stability so that your internal spirit can swim freely. You can move a lot, but you need to feel a sense of home wherever you're. And that's not easy to achieve. But you have the knack to connect instantly with people, you can make the most distant stranger your friend in no time. The more people surround you, the safer you feel. Community and sense of camaraderie soothe you nomad heart. As long as you have people around you, everywhere can be your home.

And in that hope will you work your magic, working tirelessly to build your foundation. Even though your spirit is a nomad, constantly moving, you have trouble letting go of things and people, gradually, the stuff you pack with you gets more and more heavy, slowing you down. The challenge for you is to learn when to let go, to travel light. What your heart truly wants is the feeling of ascending the ladder, of knowing that you've done something meaningful and left a mark, of giving away the fruits of your labour, not the feeling of possessing and holding on to as many things as possible.

[usagiarchive]

what is love? — jing yuan x reader (in the eyes of yanqing)

"Ooh, maybe someday, could it happen to me too? When will it be? Who will it be? I wanna know, know, know, know, what is love?" — TWICE

sypnosis. [ 0.4k words. fluff. family. ] — When asked on the question of love, Yanqing thinks of his parents.

“Mama, what is love?”

You turn your attention to the little boy snuggled into your side as you read him a Xianzhou fairytale.

“What do you think love is, honey?”

The kid pondered for a moment before answering, “You and Dad are love!”

The joy he displayed on his face melted your heart and you couldn't help but bundle him up in your arms.

“Really? How so?”

“Don't you and Dad love each other? Isn't that love?”

You smiled and laughed a little, “That's an action, sweetheart, we love each other, it's not really a meaning, sweet boy,”

He tilted his head at you like a seal, very confused.

“The meaning of love and being in love are two different things, honey,” you tell him, not knowing how to approach the subject of love with a four-year old child.

“Think of it this way, let's think of love as your swords, Swords and using your swords are two different things, right?”

The child blinks up at you, “Mama, I understand… but at the same time I don't…”

You laughed and gave him a kiss on his forehead, “I'll explain when you're older, but for now… bedtime!”

…

Yanqing doesn't remember the interaction now that he's grown older, but if he thinks about what love is for him, you'd find his answer the same.

Love for him, was you and his Dad.

In the way that you learned to love tea as he did, even if you didn't like it at all, detested it at first, all because he loves it and you love him.

In the way his Dad never let you do anything when he's around, during grocery runs he'd lift all the bags and just let you hold his hand, during your weekend dates, he'd never let you worry about anything.

In the way you'd immediately get a pillow and a blanket if you find him sleeping in the patio (and most of the time join him), because he always complains about the crick in his neck he always has when he wakes up.

In the way he'd never seen the two of you have a serious fight, not in front of him at least, or not long enough that he'd notice because the two of you resolved anything within minutes of talking.

In the way his Dad would always peel an orange for you to share, “A half for your Mom, a half for me”, even if you'd go for a second orange, half of it will always be the other’s.

So yeah, if ever you'd ask Yanqing what love is. His answer would be you and Dad.

And maybe… he thinks as he pictures a certain spitfire girl that burrowed her way into his heart, maybe he can find a love like that, too…

usagi's note: december has been so incredibly kind to me (aside from me breaking my foot and not getting sunday) it's actually been so nice, ive met more people in this app and people here are so supportive and nice! i think ill enjoy this more hehe, merry christmas guys :))

also guys how do you do the tiny text thing? im so interested and i kinda wanna try that type of format in my works.

@usagiarchive 2024. do not repost, translate, or use for AI.

[bunnis-monsters]

I would like to know if the reader has access to the internet? Reading fanfics, watching movies, exploring everything else. Literally anything that would make her happy. Or is she limited in all of that?

I’m assuming you mean human reader that’s now the queen of the bee hybrid hive, but yes!

You have a very comfy set up. The smarter bee hybrids researched human living spaces and made sure you had a nice bed, decorations that suited your interests, and technology that will keep you entertained.

They also go out and steal collect items you want, and give it to you when you’re upset. Kind of like jingling car keys in front of a crying baby lol

Although your schedule is very busy, the bee hybrids make sure you have time to wind down and indulge in your interests… but you’ll almost always be surrounded by either your baby bees or the adults hoping for some attention, so be careful when you choose to indulge in… certain things.

Scary movies are a no-no around the baby bees, they’ll be traumatized for a while and be stuck to your side like Velcro.

And it’s probably in your best interest to make your the adult bees don’t find out about too many new kinks and sex positions because they are FREAKY and ready to try new things to please you. If you want that then quietly scroll on your laptop looking at sec toys and porn while they’re snuggled up with you. They won’t completely understand human sex at first but they will get horny hearing or seeing anything that resembles your body.

[bunnyyyuu]

shoto who doesn't know how to show physical affection: he always clams up when it's touching time. it seems like he's running away from your love. it hurts your feelings big time, to be frank. but, wait! no, no, that's not it at all. he loves you, he cherishes you, he worships you.

even though his back is always pressed against yours at night rather than his arms tangled around you, he cares. despite his adversaries to intimacy, he cares. while he can't do much more than a hand-hold on a good day, he cares. he cares.

shoto who wakes up before the sun just to pack you a lunch for work. shoto who replaces the flowers in the vase on your bedside right before they start to wilt. shoto who's hands are in his pockets, but his eyes are always on you. shoto who spends his commute to-and-from patrols reading up on your interests and hobbies, so he can fully understand and sympathize with your adorable rants. shoto who pays for everything even though he doesn't have to. shoto who can't go shopping without picking up a "little something" for you. shoto who has a note on his phone filled with little things you've mentioned only once that you like or you want. shoto who makes time for you—"hero work is important, but not more than you." shoto who thinks you hung the stars, and who would hang them for you.

shoto who loves you his way.

[mouthsfullofsharpteeth]

so, ive been rewatching season two of arcane, and noticed a few things

in viktor's commune, this is the kid that leads jayce to viktor. i always thought it was like... an odd amount of focus to be put on this character. tho i wasnt really thinking too much of it, because arcane loves to zero in on background characters in a sort 'mulan and the others find a doll in the wreckage of a village' kind of way, you know? look small for big impacts.

putting the rest under a read more because this gets long

now, in ekko's alternate reality in episode seven. i always like watching the crowds of zaunites, mainly searching for easter eggs and any possible connections that i can draw back to our main universe. and i may have found one

here's the crowd watching heimer's little street performance

uh

UH

...........

this is, obviously, the same fucking kid.

what i think is most interesting about this, though, is that in the 'good ending' universe that ekko ended up in, zaun was a community where physical differences and disabilities, like needing a wheel chair as mobility aid, were not seen as something needing to be fixed. it can be implied that there are probably a lot more ways of making things accessible in that version of zaun, and that disabilities dont prohibit zaunites from being with others and doing what they want.

unlike in our universe, where this was clearly not the case. i think that that crowd shot is, in a way, a direct parallel to viktors backstory opening shots.

the group of children playing together as a group, and viktor, another child with a physical disability, is forced to be off by himself. isolated either because of his peers not wanting to be around him, or because the environment around him is just not accessible (most likely both)

they basically hand it to us. singed asks why viktor isn't playing with the other children, and all viktor has to do is show the fact that he is disabled for singed to understand. the inaccessibility and exclusion and ableism is just a fact of life.

so, it makes sense that when viktor gets the ability to heal others, he makes this child able bodied, just like he did for himself. viktor can't even conceive of a society like the zaun and piltover that ekko ended up in, because his whole life he has been cast aside due to his disability.

its just interesting to me that they made the child who brings jayce to viktor at the commune be another young zaunite with a mobility aid, just like viktor was. especially how later, jayce is the one to tell viktor the monologue about how he was never broken, and his disability wasnt something he needed to completely remove, because it was a part of him, and who he was already was enough.

just some cool food for thought!

[oennpellmell]

I was thinking that the other after reading a yet another discussion about how women didn't have any sex drive nor phantasm because it wasn't in our evolutionary nature as a mean to reproduction. You the usual "only male orgasm is necessary"... as if nature gave a damn about only giving pleasure center to the beings with semen or had any write in stone logic about reproduction. But I digress.

So while all those men debate on why it wasn't technically possible for female to, you know, like sex, or anything related to it, the same way men did (as an argument as to why it was more difficult for men to control their libido), I though: "Does any of those weirdos not realize that the erotic industry is literally dominated by women consumers. That most of fandoms shipping and fanfics are in majority carried and created by girls and women, which HIGHLY contribute to the success of a media, as the more they are involved in said fandom, the more likely it will gain popularity. That there is an entire genre (Yaoi) catering to the ladies pornographic and erotic interest and that in any bookstore, the entire erotic section is practically entirely sold to a female audience?"

And it isn't just the naughty side of fandom/media. I cannot prove it because it is anonymous, but I convinced that AO3 is mainly composed of a female community, that is on the author side than in the readers side. Every time, I read one fan fic I can tell from the way it is written that a woman is being it. Women have always been the most efficient silent marketer of all those medias and when I read guys saying women don't understand anything about video game and fake interest into, I am thinking that if I type said game on the Google search engine, I know that all the fan merch and creation I will find will be mainly done by girl. Or queer people, because their community is also a big factor into that underground marketing. And I am a bit tired of this hypocrite view. Producer and big studios keep on saying that things that could cater to a female (and/or a queer) audience will not work, because, in fact, they are afraid that it will chase away their precious male consumers if the latter hear it isn't just for them. They think only their view matter so they choose to completely ignore what the real demographic of a fandom is really made of. It is the equivalent of an immature boy club that have build a tree house with a "no girl allowed" sign: If girls were not talking about it, that treehouse would lose its interest in a week. That is why they continue to do marketing survey with teenage boys (and when they do create stuff that is based on it, it is usually a flop) instead of expending to the entire human population. And when they do on piece of media they claim to be for everyone, they made so insanely badly without much effort to let people know about its existence, which they use afterward as an excuse to go back to their usual way because "obviously it isn't working."

Leading to douchebags claiming afterward the "females" do not and cannot enjoy media nor have elaborate taste of it, the way males do, because they cannot project nor comprehend the deepness and multilayer of a fiction. As they are creature of present, therefore their brain can't imagine meaning beyond concrete representation; that they can even understand that two actors not really related by blood in real life can play member of the same family on screen. thus, they only pretend to be interest to attract the male attention. this is pretty toxic and I would really like it to end.

[mimicha-arts]

LC - YINGDU EP1 SPOILERS, TW - blood, death scenes

Yeah I logged in just for LC to sum up things in my DMs with Forest (love u), mostly about dives.

Still have too many ideas about how mechanics actually work, as well as abilities transmigration, so I'll focus on differences of dives and some things from previous seasons.

Scene with Vein.

In my understanding, the opening scene already includes 2 different developments of events.

1, where CXS, after being wounded, was led by LG into the room, while Vein went to pick up the gun. We see bloody footprints, traces on the table, but that's all.

2, where Wayne is already standing at the closed door, clearly shows other events - a chair, other objects scattered on the floor, according to the blood prints, the body seemed to have been dragged + there are no prints on the tabletop.

What is also interesting is that the background is slightly different in both scenes, if you pay attention to the shelves on the left.

There is a difference in the photos too - the first version shows only a crack, the second - a broken glass.

For me, the conclusion is that already here we see 2 different timelines.

Lu Guang's injury

In the first option, although Vein shoots at the door, he misses (time ~ 23:11), Lu Guang closes the door and is not injured

So , missing scene

We don't know what happened for about an hour. In the second version (cause it has stains on the floor, overturned things), the blood on the photo already speaks of the not shown scene. I doubt that Vein simply changed his mind and left, so Lu Guang had to "deal with" him.

At this point, he himself is deeply wounded, but the most important thing is that in these shots we are shown his yellow eyes - this is already a dive in a dive, some kind of repetition of the events.

s2ep12

At the same time, this drive is different from the drive that was shown in the second season.

The blood pattern on his clothes is similar, but even if we exclude the fact that he doesn't look out of breath/in pain, there are other details.

- blood stains on his face - furnishings, of objects on the table - blood on hands (by the way, in the scene with Vein, when he raised his hands in front of him, both of his hands were covered in blood)

Lu Guang's watch

For us as viewers, the watch on his right hand is a familiar part of the design, he wears it on his right hand in both s1 and s2

So, after diving, the first thing he tries to do is check the time, and looks at his right hand.

We still don't know the origin of his watch, since he didn't wear them in almost all the flashbacks. Except for the new one, where the watch is on his left hand.

Thus, Yingdu gives us a new diving point - April 12th (in addition to the dives on September 13).

Maybe the time of this dive will correlate with the time indicated in s2 (but with which there were no associated events)

Except for the poster, the watch on Lu Guang's left hand appeared in the flashback of CXS's death in s2, which probably separates this variant of his death from the ones shown in the scene with Vein, and perhaps the difference can give us insight into the timeline's chronologies later on.

September and April

To be honest, this whole thing makes me very excited, because of the existence of the old theory about the broken time in April and September - I wrote about it in detail a year ago in that post

Emma, April-September and chronology

For me, this means that circumstances of the case, who the unknown victim was, although they have faded into the background now, will still be a key.

Pretty sure this has all been discussed, but thanks for reading. Let's all… have fun with the new season ~

[thepixelelf]

warnings: domestic animals. tags: established relationship. christmas stuff. wc: 869

this has been in my drafts since dec 2023 and I realized it was collecting dust so I wanted to just roll up my sleeves and finish it so... here you go!

[a little thing called bad timing] Everyone knows that Seungcheol is a dog person -- you most of all. There's not a day that goes by without him turning his phone to face you with Kkuma's adorableness on the screen, sent to him by his parents. Of course, you love those pictures. Kkuma is an angel, and if you were the jealous type, you'd probably be wary of just how much Seungcheol pampers her, but luckily, you're not. In fact, you absolutely understand his behaviour. Before your family's cat passed away when you were younger, you're pretty sure you took about a million pictures of her just... existing.

That said, when Seungcheol not-so-subtly hinted that he wanted a dog last Christmas, you had to let him down easy. Your apartment at the time wasn't pet friendly, and you honestly weren't in a place financially to support a puppy with the love and attention one would deserve. Seungcheol's pout back then almost broke your heart, but he knew you were right, especially when you said you couldn't afford a cat, either, even if you wanted one.

This year, though, you moved to a new building together -- where pet allowance wasn't a choosing factor, but an added bonus -- with much more space in your apartment. And earlier this fall, you got the promotion you've been gunning for since you got your new job.

Which leads you to now. Everyone knows Seungcheol is a dog person. Everyone also knows you're a cat person. But the adorable black and white puppy in your arms has completely won you over with its yips and jumps, the way it climbs straight into your lap when you sit down, and its adorably glimmering eyes. A friend of a friend's dog had puppies, and when they asked if you knew anyone interested, you thought of your own glimmery-eyed partner. It was about time.

There are still quite a few days until Christmas, but you're sure that if Seungcheol had a choice, he'd want to meet this precious pup sooner than later. You were lucky that Seungcheol told you he had to stay later at work today, meaning you could pick up the puppy from your friend and acclimatize her to your apartment before he comes home. You've been spending the time decorating, as well, and you consider the tinsel in your hand for a second.

"Hey girl," you say, crouching down and scratching your new puppy's head. "How do you feel about wearing a little gift-wrap bow?"

She doesn't answer, of course, because she's a dog, but you chuckle at the adorable tilt of her head anyway.

"Yeah, I agree. Too cheesy."

The familiar sound of the front door getting unlocked makes you lift your head. "Oh, he's here." You lift your finger to your lips in a shush even though the puppy obviously has no idea what that means, and you scoop her into your arms.

From where you're standing in the kitchen area, the front door is just around a corner and out of sight. One more time, you give the puppy a conspiratorial grin before peeking just your head around the corner.

"Welcome home--"

"Hey, I'm back--"

Your jaw drops as you take in your boyfriend, or rather, the crate he's poorly hiding behind his legs, and the giant, shiny red bow stuck to the top of it.

Seungcheol smiles the way he always does when he comes home and sees you. "What are you doing hiding back there? C'mere, I got something for you."

You don't budge. "Is that...?"

Understanding that you aren't coming closer, Seungcheol just chuckles and brings the crate out in front of him. The front grate reveals a fluffy, orange kitten behind it.

You gasp. "You didn't!"

He shrugs. "I thought, since you've been missing your childhood cat recently, and we got this new apartment..."

"Cheol, I..."

"Did I read it wrong?" Seungcheol's eyes shine with worry and doubt. When you can't find the words to explain yourself, he continues. "I'm sorry. I should've asked, I know. Minghao knew somebody looking for homes for kittens and I just thought about how much you like Wonwoo's cats and--"

The puppy in your arms has finally had enough of hiding, and she barks, hopping to the ground. She trots over to Seungcheol to thoroughly investigate the shoes he's yet to take off.

"Oh," he says simply, eyes wide at the surprise house guest. "Oh!" Carefully, he sets the crate on the bench you have next to the door, out of reach of the excited puppy. He crouches down and pets her with both hands. "Hello," he coos. "Aren't you precious?"

Your heart warms at the sight, especially when the kitten curiously paws at the door of the crate instead of cowering away at the sound of a dog.

Seungcheol looks up at you, delighted. "Who's this?"

Just like he did when you asked him about the kitten, you shrug. "Merry Christmas?"

He must've suspected as much. His smile widens as he stands, and he holds his arm out for you to come to his side. You wrap your arms around him and giggle when he presses a hundred kisses to your cheek, while the puppy bounces in excitement at your feet.

"Seungcheoool," you whine, though to say you don't like his attention would be a total lie.

His smile widens until his eyes become your favourite crescent moons, and he locks his hands together behind you. "You know," he teases with a playful tilt of his head. "I've always dreamed of having twins."

[notbecauseofvictories]

50/50

Well, 2024 sure did...happen.

Anyway! I didn't set any sort of goal to watch 50 films and read 50 books this year, but that's where I ended up. Neither number is exactly accurate, and I'm leaving out television, revisiting what I've already read/watched, and all the ridiculous novels I pick up when I'm hungover, but still. I'm kind of impressed with myself. I didn't get to 50 books last year, and I don't think I've watched 50 movies in a year ever---but the more I watch them, the more I explore what they can do and communicate, the more I want to see. As a lifelong reader, it's interesting to explore a new kind of art, to try and intuit your way in through a strikingly different form of communicating the exact same humanness.

TOP FIVE 2024

FILMS

The Florida Project (2017)

Crimes of the Future (2022)

M (1931)

Something in the Dirt (2022)

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021)

It's been months and months since I saw The Florida Project, and I still think about it. The bright and artificial sherbet coloring of it; the dank and mold and shadows that linger around the edges....Actually, I think of all these films in terms of their aesthetics first. Not that there wasn't a story there, but because they all represent such a marriage with form. Consider Crimes of the Future with its fading decay, its browns and rust; M with its stylized, refined cityscape even in the greyscale of 30s cinema; Something in the Dirt where every shot is mundane, or fantastical or both; and We're All Going to the World's Fair, with the particular blue-grey loneliness of the internet age. Surely the benefit of watching a movie (as opposed to anything else) is being presented with something to watch, and I like when directors and creative teams understand that.

Honorable mention to American Psycho (2000) since I'm still a little insane about it---or maybe Corsage (2022) because whether or not it was a good movie, it was nevertheless the most uncompromising, brutal portrait of a historical figure I've seen.

BOOKS

The Rehearsal, Eleanor Catton

Big Swiss, Jen Beagin

Vintner's Luck, Elizabeth Knox

Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand

Diavola, Jennifer Thorne

Some people may try to tell you that horror is a discrete genre---I am here to tell you that it's not. All great novels are horror stories, and those listed above especially. From The Rehearsal's self-important artistes, to the therapy-speak Millennials of Big Swiss, to the musicians of Wylding Hall (who miss every sign that Something Is Happening) and the Pace family of Diavola (who deny that the signs mean anything, even after fleeing their vacation home in the night)....all these novels are a study in people experiencing something painful, even terrible. And yet, that provides incredibly fertile territory for their authors to explore the things that come with horror---complicity, desire for closeness, narration and performance, the open wound of family, the thin netting of modernity that keeps us from plunging into something older and darker than we can comprehend.

The only exception might be Vintner's Luck. Not because it's not there as a theme, but because the novel itself spans the narrator's life. By the time he's middle-aged he's committed so many errors, he can't judge too harshly when others do. In this respect it's almost an answer to the questions horror poses---not just how do you survive this? but how do you go on, having survived that?

Honorable mention to Dead Inside, by Chandler Morrison, because it was stomach-turning in the very best way. Echoes of Cipher by Kathe Koja---when an author really knows, really understands, how to wield grossness without shirking or apologizing for it, the result is delightful.

Books of 2020 | Books of 2021 | Books of 2022 | Books of 2023

[togglesbloggle]

Insofar as I have a principled position on the matter- and I don’t, not really- it’s this: art does have the ability to alter our values and our way of interpreting the world. It’s absolutely a live grenade, and should be taken seriously as such.

Like, of course it does! Probably you can point to some book, some film, some story somewhere that touched you not just deeply but irrevocably. There are moments of aesthetic experience which give a before and after to our lives, just as surely as moments of extraordinary suffering or extraordinary joy can.

I’m lucky enough to have more than a few I can list off, personally. Profoundly transformative ones like Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited or the music of John Cage, sure. But maybe even more interesting (tractable?) to me were small moments of grace like the one I found in the Dragonlance novels by Weis and Hickman: the dark wizard Raistlin Majere wove back and forth across the line between ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ in exactly such a way that, after reading his books at a young age, I immediately and quite distinctly overcame my fear of the dark.

What a wonderful thing for a book to do! I’d be hard-pressed to explain exactly how, if only because I’m such a different person now than I was then. Perhaps your own intuition will bridge the gap a bit. It was all tied up with this distinction between good and evil, you see, and with the ability to stare in to the face of evil things without flinching, to understand that they have contingency and history just like good things do, and to be in some sense in community with them.

That was a long, long time ago, and I don’t think my model of the world even has evil in it any more, not in the sense that I believed in it then. But my fear of the dark never came back, either.

I don’t believe for a minute that Weis and Hickman had any idea that they were giving me that gift in particular, nor did they have any sensible means to achieve such a goal even if they somehow wanted to. It wasn’t a transformation mediated by intent, you know? It didn’t reduce to an argument that I believed or disbelieved in some intellectual way, or to some specific controlled experience that the authors had planned for me.

Art is transformative, but not in the way that effective polemic is transformative. It doesn't (principally) reason with us or persuade us. Rather, I think art is dangerous for the same reasons that travel to a foreign country is dangerous, or a friendship with somebody new is dangerous. It threatens us by expanding our conscious history to include new categories of experience, that is, by changing the context in which we go about the business of living.

It's wrong to think of art mostly as a tug-of-war dragging hapless consumers from one ideology to another, with the victory going to whichever faction can fill the algorithm with mass-produced and doctrinally compliant stories clamoring endlessly for their views. Normalization has its power, don't get me wrong, but there will always be far greater power in a single glimpse over the horizon.

Think about Whoopi Goldberg's account of seeing Nichelle Nichol's Uhura on television:

“Well, when I was nine years old Star Trek came on. I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, ‘Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!’ I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be.”

Once. It took one time, and the walls fell away, and everything was possible. The fashions and approved styles may come and go with the seasons, but the outer perimeter of our experiences, and the sense of what the world could be, can only ever grow, and sometimes it grows by leaps and bounds in an instant.

I guess this is why I tend to think of censorship and control over media as basically quixotic. Sure, with enough energy you can control what's normal and what's public, but controlling what's possible is an exercise in futility on a grand scale. You can never win that fight, only lose it fast or slow.

We all have this remarkably unpredictable collection of soft places and hard places: some things in us that deform to match the shape of their environment, and other things that break us before they can bend. And we all try to find a way to make these strange shapes work within the limits of our own experience and the world as we understand it. Some of us thrive in communities and cultures where others die gasping, and some of us spend our entire lives trying to smash through excruciating barriers that others can't even detect.

Art is one of the things that expands those limits, gives the strange creature inside us a little bit of room to stretch and grow and find a space for the hard bits to arrange themselves as they need to be. But it can't do that without changing the soft parts as well, because the soft parts need external force to maintain their shape. Socialization and ideology can only weakly bind us, because they rely on deliberate and conscious pressures to conform; ignorance is stronger, because it denies us the choice altogether. Without art, you'll never really be able to learn what kind of animal you are, as opposed to the kind of person your world has told you to be. But art will change you, too, as discovery always will.

The life you have now has real value- great beauty, and great meaning. For all that you are defined in part by the walls of your cage, knowledge and new experiences are not something to accept lightly, and they can never be undone. All I can say, really, is that I've never once regretted it.

[hunieday]

Yuki - 16PRODUCERS Rabbit Chat

Please note that I am not a professional translator and I'm only doing this to share the side materials to those who cannot access them, if you notice any mistakes please let me know nicely. Enjoy!

Momo: (Good morning... Momo from Re:vale here...)

Momo: (Today I’m at Yuki’s place early in the morning…. To have a very exceptional conversation... Okarin, can you hear me…)

Okazaki Rinto: Thank you for your hard work, Momo-kun! But what’s with the odd energy, it’s as if you’re playing a wake-up prank?

Momo: (I’m keeping the energy low since Yuki’s still stuck drifting in dreamland…)

Yuki: I’m sleepy

Momo: Kyaa! Yuki’s here in person!! Even sleepy Yuki is super handsome 😍✨

Momo: Yuki just got up from the sofa! 🥺🌟 Okariiiin! How are things going in the studio?

Okazaki Rinto: Yuki-kun, thanks for your hard work as well. So I’m supposed to be stationed in the studio?

Okazaki Rinto: The president walked out to attend a meeting just now, so it’s really quiet here. I just made some coffee!

Momo: You’re all set for the discussion!! And guess what, Yuki’s brewing some tea for us too! 😭 Such a gentleman...! 😭✨

Momo: Camera crew, zoom in closer‼️

Okazaki Rinto: There’s a camera crew?

Momo: I’m the camera crew!

Yuki: Momo brought two phones today for some reason.

Momo: Well yeah, since we’re gonna talk via rabbichat today I wouldn’t be able to capture your beautiful face otherwise!!! So I brought my spare phone to record you 😎😎

Yuki: How dedicated

Okazaki Rinto: How very dedicated.

Momo: Hey wait a sec, I just noticed while I was snapping pics but is your neck hurting, Yuki!?!?!?!?!?

Yuki: You caught me. I probably slept wrong.

Yuki: I fell asleep at the desk while I was composing and now I can’t turn my head to the right

Momo: Huhhhh!!!! Then I’ll sit on your right side to protect your neck!!

Yuki: Absolutely not. I won’t be able to see your face

Momo: Wait a sec,,,,,,

Momo: Yuki, aren’t you pulling the Super Darling gun a bit too early in the morning….being this beautiful should be illegal!?!?!? 😭😭

Yuki: Only for you, Momo.

Yuki: But what exactly are you protecting my neck from?

Momo: Oh you know, a stray baseball flying in from the right, or someone bumping into you and making you stumble!!

Yuki: That’s straight out of a manga.

Yuki: So what would you do if a water bucket came flying in from the left?

Momo: I’ll dash to block it and say something like “close call…”!!! lolololol

Momo: Wait, Yuki, why’s your manga knowledge so extensive!?!?

Yuki: Ruri-san made me read some when I visited your house.

Momo: What the hell is nee-san plotting lololololol

Yuki: It was pretty interesting.

Okazaki Rinto: I’m glad you seem to be enjoying yourselves over there! Now then, shall we get started?

Momo: Sorry Okarin lolololol we’re sitting across from each other and ready to start 🤩 

Okazaki Rinto: Good! They requested a laid-back, relaxed conversation for this, that’s why we’re doing it through rabbichat.

Okazaki Rinto: Let’s start with Yuki-kun, how did you feel when you heard that Momo-kun was going to produce your song?

Yuki: I was really happy of course. Momo always gives me energy with his warm words, so I was curious about what kind of melody he would give me through this production.

Yuki: Momo’s very good at conveying his feelings, so I always felt like he’d have a knack for creating music that resonates with people, something that lingers in their minds and stays in their hearts, warm and comforting.

Okazaki Rinto: I see…! That’s a perspective only someone who regularly composes music would have.

Momo: Oh you... You always make me happy with your words, Yuki 🥲

Momo: But to be honest, it was suuuuper stressful….

Yuki: Really? Even though “Can’t Stop Emotion” turned out amazing.

Momo: Yuki,,,,

Yuki: It’s tough, but also a lot of fun, right? Making music I mean.

Momo: Yeah. It was a lot of fun.

Momo: I didn’t fully compose the song myself since it was a team effort, so I didn’t fully understand everything you do but

Momo: Having to convey my feelings through something other than words and gestures was super difficult, but I was so happy. How do I explain it… I treasure that feeling!

Yuki: I can relate

Yuki: Whenever I’m working on a new song, I start cursing everything around me. I contemplate never working on anything like that ever again, quitting songwriting altogether. But when I’m finished and I hear Momo’s voice on the song, I realize that “ah, there’s no other job that could make me happier than this.”

Momo: Yuki,,,Can I sit next to you,,,,?

Yuki: This position is very comfortable.

Momo: Awwww ‼️ I got rejected 😭‼️

Okazaki Rinto: So Momo-kun, how did you decide on what direction to take amidst all your hard work?

Momo: First and foremost, I thought about what kind of Yuki I wanted to portray! Like the Yuki who’s not a morning person, the Yuki who’s super proactive when it counts, the Yuki who’s sensitive and overflowing with emotion, the Yuki who’s amazing at cooking, super into cleaning, who’s just a kind, dashing gentleman with a beautiful voice…

Momo: But at the end of the day, I wanted to shine the spotlight on Yuki’s passion for music. A quiet, calm, yet fiercely unwavering flame. I wanted to express that dignified strength and the freedom in his boundless music.

Momo: And that’s the reason why the intro is quiet and minimalistic, but as the chorus hits, the music bursts forth like it’s flying, flapping its wings, dancing, being set free, going on a journey! Those are the feelings that resonate within me when I listen to the music Yuki makes for me!

Yuki: You really put a lot of thought into this

Yuki: You have real talent, Momo

Momo: Huhhh???!!! you don’t have to flatter meee 😆 even though that makes me happy 😆✨

Yuki: I’m serious.

Momo: Y-You really made your point come across...

Okazaki Rinto: What on earth just happened over there?

Momo: Yuki sat down next to me 🥹🥹

Yuki: I made sure to face him from the side that doesn’t hurt.

Yuki: It’s just as you described, Momo. When I got the demo, I was moved by how the song felt like it was taking me on an ever-changing journey.

Yuki: I felt the same way I did the day you brought me out of that dark place, showing me so many new and different sides of this world.

Yuki: Maybe that’s why the song felt familiar to me.

Momo: You’re the one who changed my world, Yuki!

Momo: Back when I thought there was only one path for me, when I felt trapped and depressed, I came across the music you wrote.

Momo: It warmed my frozen body, frigid to the tips of my fingers, brought color back to my world, and filled me with the urge to move ahead, to be passionate about something.

Momo: I poured all those feelings from back then, how I feel now, as well as my desire for us to always stay at the top into the lyrics!

Yuki: I wouldn’t have been able to move forward if not for your words.

Yuki: I felt like giving up on everything at some point, I could’ve thrown it all away. But you’ve always been there to save me. That’s why it’s all for y-

Yuki: No

Yuki: Nevermind, I don’t think I can say that right now, but I will tell you this

Yuki: "Can’t Stop Emotion" will be my treasure, always and forever.

Yuki: Stay by my side and keep singing with me, Momo. You’re the absolute king, unparalleled by anyone.

Momo: Okay,,,

Momo: A long, heartfelt message from Yuki,,,I’m eating so well,,,

Okazaki Rinto: What a wonderful day for you two to be honest with each other. I’ll keep supporting Re:vale forever and beyond!

Okazaki Rinto: Alright, can you please tell us more about the costume?

Momo: Sure!!! First of all, Yuki’s like a snow fairy who descended upon us during winter, so I pictured the stars shining brightly in the clear winter night sky 🪄🧚‍♂️☃️

Yuki: A fairy, huh?

Momo: You’re such a beautiful fairy that your face stands out amidst the clashing patterns! I wanted to show off your gorgeous sex appeal, that’s why I decided to express that with a variety of intricate patterns💫

Momo: And then I added chiffon material to the jacket to evoke the image of the starry sky, with scattered, shiny silver details all over, paired it with slim-fit pants to accentuate Yuki’s figure and balance the outfit for a sharp, smart look!! 💫

Yuki: Your fingers move so fast when you’re talking about me that it’s impressive

Momo: Well I am talking about Yuki after all 👍👍

Okazaki Rinto: Thank you for the passionate explanation! What about the details in the photoshoot itself?

Momo: Didn’t it look like a snow fairy had descended!? 🪄🧚‍♂️☃️ I really wanted to make it snow for real, but I didn’t want Yuki to feel cold, I was thinking about what to do and then it hit me…

Momo: Why not use light to represent that snow!? And that’s how we got Yuki, sparking gorgeously like the handsome man he is 🌟

Yuki: Everything was dazzling for real 

Momo: That’s how much Yuki shines in my eyes! From the first time we met until now! Forever and always!!

Yuki: Really? You’re always shining bright, Momo.

Momo: For real!? 🥹 Then we can always enjoy that light together 🎄

Yuki: That’s true ^^

Okazaki Rinto: It’s Christmas, so that works perfectly!

Momo: I love how you’re always watching from a distance without interrupting when we’re like this, Okarin 🥹

Okazaki Rinto: I’m flattered! As much as I’d love to see more of your shenanigans, it’s time for you to say a few words to your fans…!

Momo: "Can’t Stop Emotion" is like a selfish wish of mine. It doesn’t portray the gentle, idol-like Yuki. Instead fully expressing my admiration, my love for him, my passion and my promise to keep going as the kings.

Momo: So, I hope our fans listen to this song and continue supporting us, forever and ever. We’ll fly towards the miracle waiting for us tomorrow!

Yuki: Momo called it “a selfish song”, so I want everyone to know how elated I am and how tremendously important it is to me that Momo’s being this selfish.

Yuki: And I feel so much more determined now that this song has been gifted to me. I’ll continue to be the absolute champion, together with Momo. And I hope all of you will follow us.

Yuki: Thanks to Momo, I’ve rediscovered the joy of creating music. I know what it’s like to push through everything to go on, to aim higher and higher. That’s why Re:vale is invincible.

Yuki: There’s no one greater than us, is there? Let’s move towards the future we want to see with you, with everyone.

Momo: Yuukiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Yuki: Momo’s crying now.

Okazaki Rinto: Maybe he’s still hung up on the fact that you couldn’t wipe his tears last time!? (1)

Yuki: Today’s a Re:valeful day, so come over when you’re done, Okarin.

Okazaki Rinto: What do you have in mind?

Momo: Oh yeah, we’re gonna rewatch all our past live performances! We’re gonna reminisce over drinks! (๑>؂•̀๑)👍

Yuki: It felt like the right time to reflect on everything we’ve done so far, especially fresh off producing songs for each other.

Okazaki Rinto: Is it really okay for me to intrude on such a special day...?

Momo: Of course! Re:vale’s journey would be incomplete with you, Okarin!

Yuki: Re:vale’s what it is because you’re here with us.

Okazaki Rinto: Thank you so much! I’ll bring something tasty with me!!

Momo: Hell yeah! Then, let’s chat until morning!! 🥳

(1)This is a reference to Momo’s 16PRODUCERS Rabbit chat.

[tls12lessthan3]

ok so. the thing about jang hayoung is. her being transgender is explicitly meant to represent her autonomy as a person, and show how limited kim dokja's understanding of twsa is. like jang hayoung as the character kim dokja knows from twsa is perhaps the character who brings up the biggest questions re: character's personhood because kim dokja literally designed her, she's his oc. so we are forced to question her the most - are her traits and personality more attributable to her own choices, or are they entirely kim dokjas, for example. kim dokja knows everything about her, she was entirely his idea, and it leads to all sort of ethical dilemmas about exactly how much she can be considered her own person and what exactly their relationship to each other is.

or it would, if jang hayoung doesn't neatly sidestep all that 'does she even truly exist outside of kim dokja's perception of her' nonsense by looking firmly into the camera and saying yes, obviously. he doesn't even know im a girl! so her gender is used to establish both her autonomy as a real human being AND demonstrate that kim dokja really doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, because hey it turns out even if you create them yourself people are sort of unknowable. i wonder if that relates to any of jang hayoung's themes about communication or something

anyway. these are two ideas firmly shoved into kim dokja's face by jang hayoung's gender identity, and they are two ideas he is deeply uncomfortable with. they force him to confront some thoughts he's been deeply suppressing and conflict heavily with his worldview. and unfortunately, sing shong decided to represent this discomfort with what jang hayoung's gender establishes by showing it as discomfort with jang hayoung's gender itself. that is not to say that kim dokja isn't being organically transphobic when he misgenders jang hayoung, just that that distaste for a conflict within his (gendered) worldview represents his distaste for a conflict within his (reader) worldview.

and this is bad. this is clearly a very transphobic and specifically trans misogynistic way to demonstrate this idea. its genuinely very distasteful to me that they decided to use a trans woman character like this. it casts a dark cloud over her character and the interesting things her transness represents - as well as one over the entire novel, not helped by the many other instances of transphobia we see. and i want to clarify that i do see it as bad and distasteful before i draw the following comparison, because as much as i love reclaiming homophobic and transphobic parts of the stories i like, i am deeply cautious of doing so without clearly acknowledging the harm they cause. also, i am a trans man, so i want to tread carefully when it comes to transphobia against trans women specifically.

but i do think its notable that sing shong clearly establish this link between transgenderism and autonomy and struggling to be understood within the story, and then give us a main character who's entire life has revolved around chasing those latter two things. a character who spends the arc jang hayoung stars in either in an opposite-sex-transformation or learning a 'woman only' sport as a 'man'. yoo joonghyuk, just like jang hayoung, is a character who challenges kim dokjas ideas about what it means to be a person vs character. yoo joonghyuk's entire arc is about chasing that autonomy that jang hayoung so clearly establishes through being transgender. yoo joonghyuk spends multiple arcs trying to get through to kim dokja that he does not understand yoo joonghyuk just because he happened to read about him in the way that jang hayoung clearly does when she declares herself a woman.

this is a line that the story draws for me, not one im drawing on my own - this is a link between the autonomy yoo joonghyuk wants and the gender identity jang hayoung has that orv has already firmly established (although in a frequently transphobic way). and i think thats extremely interesting to acknowledge and explore, i think its a very clear part of yoo joonghyuk's character in this arc that never really goes away. and thats (part of) why yoo joonghyuk's end is [transition]

[skulkingfoxes]

A post-mortem of "Good Morning, Rose"

A few weeks ago, I posted my addition to the comic anthology GLIMM*R, a short comic called "Good Morning, Rose".

The reaction to it has been so uplifting and exciting. It really seemed to struck a cord with people, which, really, the best thing for me to hear as a creator. I absolutely love writing and making short comics, you can do much with so little, explore such interesting stories. The feedback I've gotten has been very heartwarming! It makes me want to explore short stories even more!

But, first, I want to talk about some of my feelings and about the process of making "Good Morning, Rose". This got a bit long, so you'll have to indulge me a bit. You should also read the comic first before reading this. Don't worry, it's only 8 pages.

Now the preamble is out of the way, lets go back to the beginning.

The idea of "Good Morning, Rose" was a nugget in my brain for a long time! Originally it was actually from the Dreamwalker's point of view, where she was a faceless entity who had a long term relationship with Rose and was trying to figure out how to explain that their relationships only were in Rose's dreams. It was a story about seeing, accepting, and loving each other truly and fully, and the trials and tribulations of getting there. Also a cute girl with an ancient eldrich being is always fun to explore.

A lot of it was too convoluted, emotionally and storywise. It also required to get into what the Dreamwalker actually was, which I ended up really not liking. So, ultimately, the idea didn't work, and I put it down. I ended up going to do my short comic Twigs instead.

When I was invited into the wlw anthology GLIMM*R and was told that the theme was "dreams", I decided to take another stab at the concept. This time, I inverted the pov, it's now Rose's story. And instead of a long term relationship, it was about the powerful first feeling of a perfect (maybe even too perfect?) first date.

One of the hardest thing to write in romance is getting readers to care about the relationship in the first place. To have the readers believe in the character's feeling, to be invested in their romance. This is even harder to do when you only have 8 pages to do it. Focusing it around a first date helped a lot in that case. There I'm not trying to sell that these two character will love each other forever and forever, just the fluttering first butterflies of realizing you're developing feeling for someone. It's why I leave it so open-ended about whether the two of them meet again at the end of the comic, or even if it was real in the first place. It's just not the point of the story.

That's something important about writing short stories, I find. You really have to hone in on an idea, on a thought. Take a simple idea and try to find all of the interesting layers. It's too easy to try to stuff a short story with too many ideas that ultimately go unfulfilled. In fact, the first draft of the comic, at the time called "Dream Date", there was a big problem with this and the pacing.

Here, take a look at the first stab at the roughs:

(BTW, there is something so fun about roughs for me lol. The art is so kinetic and loose, all about just getting the story across)/

As you can see, a lot of the ideas and imagery made to the final version of the comic. But both the initial readers and I agreed that the beginning and end were good, but the middle was messy and slowed things down. You can also see that I got stuck in the same problem I did when I first conceived of the story, it's bogged down trying to understand the Dreamwalker in a way that actually hurts the story. You simply dont have any room for bad pacing a short comic like this. I need to focus more on the character's and their emotions and exploring their actual relationship rather than blandly trying to explain the situation. A friend also suggested that I should hone in on the fluid dream-like aspects of the first couple of pages, especially since it's so fun to explore in the medium of comics. So I got to work gutting it out and trying again with the new, much stronger imo, direction.

Also there were some issues with the page format that needed changes for printing, thus the final spread had to be split up. Which is a shame, but oh well, it still works. I also honed in a lot more on Rose and her insecurities. I ended up putting a lot of myself into Rose. I'm glad readers seems to able to relate to her.

After figuring out the the story and the pacing, I went and, well, made the comic. Once you've done as many comic pages I have at this point, once you figure out a process, the actual drawing is fairly straightforward. Eventually, after thinking, and drawing, and toiling, and revising, and thinking hard about my life choices, I come out of the other end of the tunnel with a comic. One that I ended up really liking. One that other people ended up liking, which is always crazy to me.

I got a lot of interesting reactions to the comic. One demographic thinking it was sweet, wanting more of it (always a flattering thought), and enjoying the romance. Other remarking on the bittersweetness of it all, finding your soulmate in a dream, maybe never to see them again if they were even real in the first place. There were a lot of people remarking how they had a similar dream, one where they met someone they seemed totally and completely convinced that they were real and told the dreamer so, until the dreamer woke up. There was one person who asked if I had met the dreamwalker myself. Alas, my dreams are not this romantic and straightforward.

But all of us can hold hands, nod at each other, united by one universally true statement: big eldritch lady hot.

There's a lot of little bits I can talk about, like how Rose's dress is actively modeled after selkie dresses because I think they're cute, or some other trials and tribulations. But I think I've finished all I have had to say. I hope you enjoyed this and will stick around for my future projects! I definitely want to explore more short stories in the next year, especially as I am illustrating big graphic novels for my day job and don't have the time or energy for huge projects.

Till then, thank you so much! Happy holidays and have a good new year!